by Wendy Mass
The supply room was right next door to the music room, where a recording of some famous violinist was being played, drowning out the sound of her pushing open the squeaky supply room door. She thought she’d locked the door behind her—she’d been so sure of it—and had been about to pick the lock on the metal box that held the cards, when in walked this boy.
He was shorter back then and wore regular school clothes rather than an ill-fitting suit, but he already had the superior attitude he displayed now. He started yelling that he was going to report her for trying to look at the words. She kept telling him that she wasn’t even in the spelling bee, but he wouldn’t listen. He kept going on and on about how he’d studied for months for the bee. She realized that the music next door had stopped, and any minute the music teacher would come in. Daisy had no choice but to run out, humiliated, before her cover was fully blown.
“Introduce yourself,” AJ’s voice prompted in her ear, making her jump.
She forced herself to do as instructed. She was trained to notice even the subtlest shift in a person’s body language, and as she and Philip shook hands she thought he flinched ever so slightly. She knew he couldn’t recognize her, though. She’d been a redhead then, with large tortoiseshell glasses that covered half her face. Fun and cheery went out the window when she laughed as Philip said his ridiculously stuffy name.
“Daisy…,” AJ warned. He began growling at her when she started arguing with Philip over who would win the contest.
It didn’t take lessons in reading body language to know that their bickering was making Miles uncomfortable, but Philip was so obnoxious, she just couldn’t back down. She suddenly wanted to win the contest simply so Philip would lose. Not that she’d given the contest any thought whatsoever, since she’d been so certain she wouldn’t need to stick around long enough to actually participate.
She suddenly became aware that AJ had gone from growling to screaming. He was telling her something like the whole plan could be jeopardized if one of the boys insulted Logan and everyone got kicked out. So she warned them that no one should say anything mean to Logan, while having absolutely no idea what that was all about. Poor Miles looked terrified, and she instantly felt bad for letting herself get worked up over Philip. She really needed to calm down and focus on the present mission, not one that was closed three years ago.
“Daisy!” AJ barked in her ear. “What’s gotten into you?”
She couldn’t answer him, of course, not until she was alone. And she didn’t relish the idea of dredging up her one failure. AJ would just love that. In the meantime, she’d have to pretend that Philip was no more than an annoying boy, not the face she saw in her head each time she thought of that day. Then Miles started talking about life after death, and things lightened up a bit.
Then the door opened, and she realized why AJ was so adamant that no one upset Logan. That poor kid! She’d seen a lot in her long career, and she knew that life didn’t treat everyone fairly. Logan’s hands trembled a bit, and she could tell he was nervous. He greeted them by quoting scripture about how everyone has a bit of an angel inside them—or at least she thought that’s what it meant. She swallowed hard and clapped. “Lovely!”
The scars down the left side of his face couldn’t hide that same sweetness, that same happy, hopeful grin he’d worn as a child in the old photograph when he hadn’t known he was being watched. All thoughts of Philip went straight out of her head. This time she didn’t need AJ’s prompting to be polite. She stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Daisy Carpenter.”
Logan didn’t respond right away, and Daisy panicked for a second, afraid she’d done the wrong thing. Maybe he didn’t like people touching him or maybe it hurt to shake hands. But then he took her hand, and as he did, she felt it.
Beneath the raised, uneven skin, this boy was electric.
CHAPTER TWO
From the second she stepped inside, Daisy knew she wouldn’t have to pretend to be a kid in a candy factory. Her senses burst to life: the gentle hums and whirring of the machinery, the sweet smells that filled the air, the bright colors, the beams of light from the ceiling. All of it captivated her completely. It took AJ clearing his throat to remind her that she was actually on a job. Miles had clearly fallen under Logan’s spell, too. She could tell by the way he kept stealing worshipful glances at him.
Her hand still tingled from touching Logan’s. Philip didn’t seem the least bit fazed by either Logan’s appearance or the place itself. He’d barely glanced at Logan since their arrival, and he kept his back to all of them now, which suited her just fine.
She excitedly read the plaques on the wall, anxious to learn about the factory’s history, since she hadn’t gotten to that part of the file.
“Good job!” AJ said encouragingly. “You sound really interested, you’re really getting into the role.”
She wanted to laugh, since of course she wasn’t acting at all. But then Philip started being mean to Logan and her mood changed. She switched into protective mode.
“I happen to love Pepsicles,” she said, totally truthfully. And then, before she could stop herself she added, “So does my best friend, Magpie, and she’s very particular.” This, too, was true. Sometimes, on really hot days, Magpie would eat a whole box of Pepsicles.
AJ burst out laughing. “Your horse is your best friend?”
Daisy wanted to pull the transceiver out of her ear but knew she couldn’t. All she could do was try to ignore him. She was succeeding pretty well until Philip asked what Daisy’s dad did for a living, and she couldn’t remember her cover story. Why hadn’t she read that file? Of course, now that she needed him, AJ was silent. So she said the first thing that popped into her mind. That sent AJ into another fit of laughter. “Your dad is a violinist now? Classic! Good luck keeping that cover story going.”
While the others were occupied by the chocolate fountain, Daisy stepped away and whispered furiously, “Why are you here if you’re not going to help me out?”
“Sorry,” AJ said, still giggling. “Just trying to picture your dad with a violin in his hand. He’d crush it!”
That was probably true. Her dad had the big, broad build of a football player. A violin would look tiny in his large hands. Not that it mattered. No one here would ever meet her parents. She pretended to examine a barrel of taffy. “Just do your job!” she whispered.
“I said I was sorry,” AJ said, his voice muffled as he chewed. “I went to grab a sandwich. All this talk of candy is making me hungry. That Philip kid? You’re lucky he’s there.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s a good diversion. He’ll be the bad kid, so you can get away with more.”
Daisy grunted, but what he said made sense. A short, bald man with a warm, open face entered the hall, and she dropped the pieces of taffy she’d been sifting through and stepped back toward the rest of the group. Logan introduced the man as Max Pinkus.
“That guy’s the big cheese,” AJ said with a sense of urgency. “You need to turn on the charm.”
AJ rattled off all the candies Max had been credited with making, and Daisy repeated them, doing her best to seem awed by his accomplishments.
Philip actually greeted Max in a civilized manner, which meant he was brownnosing him, too. He probably had all his plans for world domination written down in that notebook of his.
When Max finished going over the contest rules, she wanted to tell the others they didn’t need to worry about her entry, since she wouldn’t be here that long. But of course she couldn’t say anything. She heard the tapping of keys in her ear.
“I just pulled up some old blueprints of the factory,” AJ said. “Try to get away for a few minutes to a secure location so we can go over them.”
The only thing she could think to do was ask to use the bathroom. She felt ridiculous as she squirmed around until Max sent her away. As soon as she was out of earshot, Daisy said, “Okay, where should I go?”
“What are you passing now?�
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She told him, all the while nodding happily at the workers ducking in and out of rooms with trays of marshmallows, buckets of melted chocolate, and, in one case, ears of corn. He directed her down a few more hallways to a door marked STOREROOM.
She tried the door. “It’s locked.”
“So?”
She sighed and reached into her bag. So quickly that anyone passing by would never even notice, she pinched off a bit of the high-tech wax and stuffed it into the lock. A few seconds later, she pulled out a perfect replica of the key, which she then reinserted. The lock clicked open. She smushed the key back into the ball of wax.
“I’m in,” she said, pulling a cord that dangled from the ceiling. A faint light flickered from the single bulb hanging there. Judging from the dust on the cardboard boxes surrounding her, the storeroom hadn’t been used in years. She sat down on the nearest box, only to fall right in.
“Whoa!” She scrambled to stand up and then laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I just fell into a box of rubber ducks!”
“Of what?”
“Rubber ducks,” Daisy repeated. “Yellow ones. Some are wearing sailor hats, if you must know.” She inventoried the small room. A large first-aid kit. Two more boxes of rubber ducks, one box, labeled EGG TOSS, full of multicolored blindfolds, two large piles of burlap sacks, a bunch of musical instruments with a layer of dust covering the keys and strings, a stack of cracked hula hoops, a large wicker basket filled with balls of different sizes, a sink, a few rolls of paper towels, and a dusty satchel with what looked like old gardening clothes inside.
“I think this stuff is from the annual picnics they used to have here.” She bent down to fix the box the best she could.
“C’mon, Daisy, you need to focus. Have you seen the secret ingredient yet?”
“I’ll keep my eyes open during the tour,” she said, reaching for a duck that had slid across the room. “Do you have my exit strategy yet?”
“There are some back-door exits that don’t seem to have surveillance and some old tunnels running through the basement. I’ll have the route mapped out by tonight.”
Daisy tossed the last yellow duck into the box and closed it back up. “I need it today. I plan to be done before tomorrow and on to the next job. No offense, of course.”
“Fine by me,” AJ said. “Babysitting you isn’t exactly my dream job either.”
“Babysitting?” she repeated, bristling. “I’m hard at work here. I’m wearing a yellow dress for goodness’ sake! I match these ducks!”
“You’re doing pretty well so far,” he admitted. “Logan and Miles seem to like you a lot. Two out of three ain’t bad, as they say.”
She thought once again of explaining how she’d met Philip before but didn’t see that any good could come of it. The organization’s rule book clearly stated that if the operative thought that someone recognized them from another job, she was supposed to alert her handler and pull out before getting nabbed. No way was she going to allow Philip to have her taken off another case. She was still confident that even though he gave her strange looks, he didn’t recognize her.
Putting the issue of Philip temporarily out of her head, she sat down on a creaky metal step stool. “Hey, why didn’t you tell me about Logan? Wait, don’t answer that. It was in the file, wasn’t it?”
“Actually, no,” AJ said. “And I don’t know too much. Some kind of accident when he was a little kid. We got some info on a bunch of trips to the burn clinic at Spring Haven Hospital, but no details.” AJ cleared his throat. “Is it bad?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “But it’s weird. After a few minutes, you don’t really notice the scars.”
“Well, just keep being nice to him. His trust is a key component to your success in this mission.”
“I know,” she said, feeling the twinge of an unfamiliar emotion. She pushed it away and stood up. Emotions got in the way of a clear head. She’d never had much time for them, especially on a mission.
“I’ve already been gone too long,” she told AJ as she pulled the string. The lightbulb flickered off as she reached for the door, making sure not to knock over any more ducks. It wasn’t until she had left the Some More S’mores Room five minutes later, armed with the alibi for her delay, that she realized what the unfamiliar emotion had been.
Guilt.
It didn’t take long—another fifteen minutes, to be exact—for the secret ingredient to make its appearance. Daisy had watched every step of the chocolate-making process with a close eye and knew that the ingredient her client was looking for must be in one of the metal tins in the Cocoa Room. She innocently asked what the square tin contained, and her hunch was confirmed.
It drove her crazy to have to pretend to Philip that she didn’t know what a trade secret was, but she wanted to keep Logan and Max talking about it. She watched one of the workers put the tin back in the cabinet and close it. She couldn’t see the front of the cabinet from this side of the window, but there didn’t appear to be any locking mechanisms.
“If you just found the secret ingredient,” AJ said eagerly, “bark like a dog.”
Ignoring him, she tried to pry all she could out of Logan without raising any suspicions. No matter how easy it would be to nab the small tin, she had learned that the direct route was usually the best. If Logan felt like revealing the secret, that sure would make things simpler. But he claimed not to know, and she was inclined to believe him.
“Very funny,” she whispered to AJ as the group headed to the Taffy Room. “The day I bark like a dog will be the day I hand in my badge.”
“You don’t have a badge.”
“You know what I mean.”
Philip glanced back at her, and she waited until he was a few feet ahead before daring to whisper again. “I did find it, though. Doesn’t appear to be locked or guarded at all. Should be easy peasy.”
“Roger that,” AJ said, crunching hard on what could only be potato chips.
“Do you ever stop eating?”
Another crunch. “I’m a growing boy.”
“Can you at least lower your microphone while you eat? I’m getting a bit nauseous listening to all the chewing and swallowing.”
“Yes, boss,” he joked. But he lowered the volume.
It was perhaps the first time Daisy could remember AJ taking a request of hers seriously. So it was with an extra bounce in her step that she volunteered to pull the taffy when the taffy maker asked. She was really getting into it when she realized everyone was looking at her. Apparently most twelve-year-old girls couldn’t lift and twist the taffy like that.
She’d been strength-training her entire life, doing drills and exercises every morning when she wasn’t on a case. She could run without being heard, enter a room without breathing, carry fifty pounds on her back for a whole mile without breaking a sweat. Lifting the taffy required no effort at all. Still, she couldn’t let them know she wasn’t an ordinary twelve-year-old, so she had to pretend she’d exhausted all her energy.
When Fran complimented her, she allowed herself for one split second to imagine how easy and uncomplicated life would be if she could make taffy all day. No prepping in the mornings, no handler in her ear, no files to read. But there would be no Mom and Dad either, or Grammy. No gadgets, no Magpie. It would be someone else’s life, and she liked her own.
She almost changed her mind, though, when she tasted the fresh taffy. She was about to ask for a second piece when Philip announced that candy was bad for you. She saw Logan go rigid, as if someone had slapped him. She couldn’t contain herself.
“Easy, girl,” AJ warned when Daisy started yelling at Philip.
Even though he’d raised the volume on his microphone again, she could barely hear him over the buzzing in her head. Why did this boy keep baiting Logan? Didn’t he have any feelings at all? One well-placed karate chop, and Philip would go down. He wouldn’t even see it coming.
“Rememb
er,” AJ said, “the worse he behaves, the less people will focus on you.”
Even so, that karate chop started to sound good a bit later, when Philip pretended to choke just because Miles talked about candy factories in the afterlife. Seriously, Philip should just let it go and leave the kid alone. Sure, it’s a strange interest, but to each his own. She’d met a lot of odd people over the years, with all sorts of quirks (including one lady who wore only orange and another who saved the last bite of food from every meal). She’d long ago learned not to judge.
This ability came in handy a few minutes later when Logan started hugging a tree. She didn’t think he even realized what he was doing. Logan obviously loved this place, and Avery—the guy in the tree—obviously did, too. Now that she thought about it, everyone they’d come in contact with clearly loved what they did. What a rare place this was.
“Big fan of cinnamon?” Max asked a moment later.
Daisy opened her eyes to see the others gathered around her. Logan and Max looked amused. Philip just looked bored. It took a few seconds before she realized her arms were around the cinnamon tree, her cheek pressed against its smooth bark. She quickly backed away, forcing herself not to blush.
This place—the warm air, the lush foliage—reminded her of the last time she and her parents had been on a family assignment. Of course, that one had been in a real jungle. And instead of making candy, they’d been sent undercover to expose a black market for monkeys.
Or was it to protect a black market for monkeys? She had been taught not to question the motives of the client. After all, every story had two sides. Who was she to decide right from wrong?
“You’re making me hungry again,” AJ complained when lunch began. “Do you think you could stop with all the oohhs and ahhhs?”
“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Daisy declared, making sure to chew her chocolate pizza extra loudly. Then, just to further annoy AJ, she started talking about what would be her perfect meals. She hadn’t expected it to lead to a discussion on all the strange things Miles was allergic to. How could someone be allergic to a color? She’d have to remember not to let the twins dress her in anything pink the next day. Wait, what was she saying? She wouldn’t even be here after today.